Talk:Art in Ruins

This article was nominated for deletion on 20 February 2008. The result of the discussion was Keep.

Art in Ruins

The article is about the well known art group Art in Ruins. Each part of the article is a direct quote from articles written about the group by well known writers, artists, curators and critics. Each has the reference below the part. Some of these can be checked at http://www.camera-austria.at/ca_events.cfm?start=2000&cat=1 I can provide further references but it will take a little more time (HannahThistle (talk) 21:39, 23 February 2008 (UTC))[reply]

These are further references that will satisfy the notability requirements: http://www.xs4all.nl/~pnr/text.html http://www.camera-austria.at/ca_events.cfm?start=1993&cat=2 http://www.camera-austria.at/ca_edition.cfm?heftid=-242101222 [see: Radikale Bilder 1996] http://www.camera-austria.at/ca_online.cfm?heftid=9 http://www.peeruk.org/publications/artforall1.html http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/art/trip.htm [see Ruins of Glamour, Glamour of Ruins 1986 see below]

We're taking the 55 bus pretty much all the way to Beck Road in Hackney - the Mare Street bus garage will do us fine. Attempt to sit upstairs on the left hand side of the bus, and pay attention because I want you to look out for the Gray's Inn Buildings on the way. We'll go down Bloomsbury Way and Theobalds Road, when we cross Gray's Inn Road the street becomes Clerkenwell Road. On our left is Gray's Inn Buildings, which edges into Rosebury Avenue. All that's left of this bohemian haunt is the façade; there is now a completely new building behind it. Back in the eighties Gray's Inn Buildings was home to rock journalists such as Nick Kent, as well as artists such as the 'group' Art In Ruins (Hannah Vowles and Glyn Banks). By the mid-eighties I was running around with the likes of Chris Saunders, whose very quiet girlfriend Tracy Emin sat and absorbed everything I said. I knew other south London art figures like Stefan Szczelkun who invited me to an independent artist organsised group exhibition "Our Wonderful Culture" at The Crypt in Bloomsbury. There I met other undergrounders including Art In Ruins. As a result of these meetings there emerged a quarrelsome bunch who decided to work on collaborative installations together. Stefan Szczelkun was the instigator but we'd meet at the Art In Ruins flat to discuss how we were going to take on the cultural establishment. Aside from artists and rock critics, Gray's Inn Buildings was filled with junkies and upon entering the complex it was easy to become embroiled in some off-street hassle.

For a while there was a real buzz around Art In Ruins, they signed to the Gimpel Fils Gallery in the West End and it looked like their brand of critical post modernism was about to storm the institution of art and give it a real shake up. Unfortunately most historical traces of their influence are currently obliterated by the less interesting work produced by what became known as Young British Art (Damien Hirst et al). At the time I collaborated with Art In Ruins I was living at the wrong end of Bethnal Green in the row of terraces on Grove Road whose demolition enabled Rachel Whiteread to realise her piece "House" (1993). Later I moved to the smart end of Bethnal Green, into a council flat near to Brick Lane. This was before the trendification of the area really got going, but by the end of the nineties the neighbourhood was changing fast. You'll see overspill from those changes as the bus comes down Old Street into Shoredtich, in the eighties this was a quiet area but now it's full of cafes, bars, galleries and fashionable shops. Likewise, in the eighties the art world was into theory, but by the mid-nineties it had switched to party mode and the party is still going on in Shoreditch and Hoxton.

http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/festplag.htm http://www.ctheory.net/printer.asp?id=251 http://www.lcca.lv/projekti/utopija/art_in_ruins/ [comprehensive CV to date] http://www.neuegalerie.at/03/mars/kuenstler_e.html http://www.neuegalerie.at/93/krieg/krieg_e.html http://www.neuegalerie.at/96/radikale/radikale_e.html http://www.neuegalerie.at/96/radikale/art_e.html

I trust this is sufficient for supporting the inclusion of the article.

With regard to the way the article is presented it is intended to use only quotes from published sources as presented in order to demonstrate the peculiar position of the group as having instigated and participated in numerous exhibitions, events, and debates through their work and attitude and to let the published sources speak for themselves. —Preceding unsigned comment added by HannahThistle (talk • contribs) 12:06, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have also added the references to the article HannahThistle (talk) 12:22, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright problems

Hello HannahThistle. The editor who marked this article as having copyright problems is correct. Please tell us you are going to rewrite this so that it looks like a normal Wikipedia article. You are allowed to summarize what the various critics have to say in your own words. If such lengthy quotations remain here, we will probably have to delete it as a copyright violation. It doesn't have to be a very long article; just give us the basic facts about Art in Ruins. If you aren't able to do this, I'll have to make this article into what we call a stub (an extremely short article) or it will have to be deleted.

Also, your documentation of the image isn't complete. It is often acceptable to use an image under fair use, but we have to know where it came from. If you don't know how to add justification for an image, you can leave the information here, and I'll fix it. EdJohnston (talk) 13:56, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

1. The quotes of which the article is composed were some of those used by the artists in their exhibition 'Double Take" at the Windows Gallery Prague in 2000. Each quote appeared as lasertext on the window in front of a piece of the artist's work, thus instantly mediating the exhibition with the disembodied voices of critics. The artists play with the voice of the artist and that of the critic. The article does the same thing. In effect the article attempts to capture the way they play with the legitimising authority of 'normal' articles. 2. The image comes from the artists. It has been used as a postcard and is this in the public domain. It is too low res. to reproduce. HannahThistle (talk) 15:17, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your attempt to capture these artists' playful work unfortunately runs afoul of our policies. Plus it is still unclear who these artists actually are. Who are the members of this group, and what country do they work in? (Many of the articles seem to be in German). Are the members Hannah Vowles and Glyn Bank? EdJohnston (talk) 16:22, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As Stewart Home (and Alex Coles in his piece) says Art in Ruins is Hannah Vowles and Glyn Banks. 87.194.6.225 (talk) 18:36, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have added a short introductory text at the beginning of the article to contextualise it HannahThistle (talk) 19:26, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

External links

I've taken these from the article page. There are too many of them and they are not formatted properly: I've formatted the first one to show how it's done. Some can be restored if they meet WP:EL. Others may be useful as references. See WP:REFB for a referencing guide. Tyrenius (talk) 03:30, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Still a mess

So far (and this is changing minute by minute) we have an article about a self styled art group by two non-notable artists (or are they supposed to be notable art and architecture critics like the first two citation try to show?). They had two shows and then got drowned in the din of the London art world. What this article needs is reliable sources that reference where this art group falls (or fell) in the overall art world. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 04:20, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Article is getting bloated again

A brand new editor, User:Allegory, has chosen to re-add a bunch of material to this article that was removed in the cleanup effort that took place during the AfD debate. A number of editors from Wikipedia:WikiProject Visual arts helped out in this effort, and I believe they did good work. As the result of Allegory's editing on March 9th, a simple but informative article of 2,845 bytes is today back up to a bloated article of 5,290 bytes that contains a lot of promotional material. That editor restored a bunch of external links that had been removed in the earlier cleanup.

I'm asking general consensus to return the article to this version, as edited by User:Scarian on 27 Feburary. One option if we can't get any cooperation from Allegory is to open a complaint at the Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard. Before doing so I hope that some neutral editors will chime in here, either in favor or against my plan. Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 04:03, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not that version, which would remove two references (although whether Latvia = "throughout Europe" ....) and the German award, but the excitable gallerist quotes can go. Is it Shoreditch or Bloomsubury? Johnbod (talk) 09:28, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Latvian publication is I think being used as a source for a list of past exhibitions, which seems harmless, so 'throughout Europe' (or a less promotional version of the same thing) might be acceptable. Since I'm guessing that WP:COI editing is going on, the location 'Bloomsbury' is probably correct. EdJohnston (talk) 13:33, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The quote you refer to by Frank Perrin is not a gallerist but a respected art critic of the time. I have added the links and further reading to give readers a chance to check out sources so making the article more informative for them, although I wouldn't say it is bloated. It is not promotion but information for those who may not have heard of the artists. Surely it is legitimate to refer readers to sources of further information. The DAAD Kunstlerprogramm stipendium is one of Europe's most prestigious artists' residencies. It has been awarded since to Damien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread, Richard Wentworth, etc, as well as Art in Ruins. You are right about the Latvian reference which is to give a citation for the throughout Europe reference. The artists live and work in fact in Bloomsbury, not Shoreditch. Allegory (talk) 19:15, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

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Reinstatement of quotation

The quoted statement by Art in Ruins: "We should say that it may be that it is our extremely visible failure to be indexed in the recent history of the dominant culture that is our greatest success." was removed on the grounds it is "self-promotional blather;" and any restoration should include and explanation of "why it can't be paraphrased, and how their own self-evaluation is encyclopediac without secondary sources."

This polemical statement by Art in Ruins is in the well-established tradition of artist's polemical statements, such as – "everyone is an artist": Joseph Beuys; "In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes": Andy Warhol; and so on; and as such, does not need paraphrasing.

Taken out of context these polemical utterances by artists may appear to be banal, factually incorrect, illogical, megalomaniac, idealistic, impractical, subversive, wishful thinking, even "blather," and so on.

Within the field of art, artists' polemical statements such as the one quoted by Art in Ruins, function as manifestations of an artistic world view and give the critical viewer, historian, etc. an indication of a frame of reference in which to discursively situate (and reflect upon) the artist's practice in relation to the taken-for-granted nature of the so-called 'real world.'

The quoted statement by Art in Ruins is from a legitimate secondary source, that is, an Arts Council of England funded catalogue produced to accompany a documentary film on the work of Art in Ruins premiered at the Zacheta Museum in Warsaw, Poland, and shown in various other locations internationally together with performative readings from the catalogue, all the sources of which are referenced with links [17, 18 and 21].

With this rationale, the quote and its reference is being restored. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bessington (talk • contribs) 19:58, 30 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]